


A Corporate Construct in King Arthur's Court

by Aethelwyrhta



Category: Arthurian Mythology, The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Crossover, Gen, I Swear This Isn't As Crack As It Looks Honest, POV First Person, Sir Kay Being A Dick, Squishy Human Clients Running Headlong Into Peril Despite Very Good Advice Not To, Terrible Fears, dashing heroics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-23 11:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15605472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelwyrhta/pseuds/Aethelwyrhta
Summary: In which Murderbot has a very long layover in the Kingdom of Logres, and goes by the name "Percival," and reenacts the adventures of the Round Table's most socially awkward knight.





	A Corporate Construct in King Arthur's Court

## I. How Murderbot came to Castle Corberic, and there saw a strange procession.

I realized as soon as I'd gotten off the transport that I'd made a mistake. There were no others leaving from Corberic immediately, or even for months. Including the one I'd just come on. I queried its bot-pilot, and received confirmation of something I should have asked about earlier: it was on a "sleeper" schedule, and would hibernate at the castle here for six months before loading another shipment and departing.

I didn't ask what this backwater exported that would be valuable enough to be worth the cost of waiting around that long, because I didn't care. But it was when I tried to scrape the local network that I realized how serious my error had been.

There wasn't any entertainment media to download.

Okay, there wasn't exactly _zero_ media, but as far as I could tell the only hub was the spaceport's, and it only had an anemic set of years-old serials that I'd already watched a half-dozen times apiece. (And some news updates on the local administrator's lingering injury, but I didn't care about that.) There was nothing new. I queried the spaceport hub again and checked its visitor information packet, it confirmed what I'd read before, which was that Logres was known for its traditional "illuminated" media. But the spaceport unhelpfully failed to elaborate, and the bot-transport didn't know or care, and was irritated by me bothering it while it was doing hibernation checks, so I left it to sleep.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, as I walked, but the prospect of months ahead without more media than I'd brought locally was upsetting me. "Months" might even be optimistic: just because a transport was leaving, doesn't mean that it would be going anywhere useful to me, and the last thing I needed was to find myself on another backwater. I needed a transport that was going back to some sort of hub.

At least there wasn't much of a corporate presence, here. I'd seen very few augmented humans since I arrived, and I might even be the only construct in the castle. It didn't help me relax very much, but it helped me relax a little.

* * *

I ended up finding a garden, with a bench, and I sat on it. I didn't find natural flora as soothing as humans often did, for whatever reason. When I've heard them talk about it, it was usually described as a sensory effect, or a reminder of home -- I think I've heard humans from verdant environments complain about being stuck somewhere sterile far more often than I've heard the reverse.

But I reviewed a memory of a conversation between Dr. Mensah and Dr. Bharadwaj discussing the merits gardens they'd seen on station, and I think they would have liked this one. (It had been some time since I'd worked for PreservationAux, and typically I would have deleted those memories by now, but now it seemed important to keep them around. For one thing, they were my crew, even if they were far away, and if the thought of meeting them again was scary and painful. And for another, they _were_ far away, and as my journey lengthened, my memories of them started to feel comfortable in the same way that _Sanctuary Moon_ did.

(They weren't _supposed_ to be that far away, at this point, but Preservation's influence had stymied corporate interests in this sector of space, and until the bot transport had shooed me out into Castle Corberic and I'd checked the outgoing listings and realized my mistake, I thought I'd been getting very close. It was depressing.))

I was busy thinking, and was starting to start up an episode of _Sanctuary Moon_ I'd only seen a dozen times, when I saw the humans. They were children, mostly, walking in a formation and looking serious and unhappy. One carried a long melee weapon, and its blade was red and wet with blood, which concerned me, but he wasn't carrying it in a way that suggested he was using it, and upon closer inspection they didn't seem tense or angry in the way that would suggest they'd just experienced violence.

The next two children carried a large lighting unit together, and finally, a child walked behind with a wide bowl. To my relief they walked by me without speaking, though they slowed a little bit as they passed the bench and as they moved on the girl with the bowl gave me a brief look, but she quickly turned her attention forwards again and soon they were gone. I didn't know what had just happened, but no one seemed to be in distress and nobody was expecting anything of me, so in the end it didn't seem to matter.

* * *

And because it seemed like I wasn't going actually going to find any privacy in this spaceport, I followed the visitor's map to the gate and ended up booking passage on a land vehicle to a place called Camelot, which was apparently a center of government. If anywhere would have a more robust network hub (and some media to download), it would be there. And I'd have to _go_ there, since satellite coverage over Logres seemed to be abysmal.

To clarify here, when I say "booked a transport," I mean I walked down the road until I found one passing, and hailed it. And despite my concerns about privacy, from the moment I left the garden to the moment I found the transport, I didn't see any other humans. Which was very strange: even for a quiet, backwater spaceport, there had been plenty of people around beforehand. Though if anything, this sudden absence made me nervous, and I was eager to get away from this place.

The good news was that passage was very cheap. It was a small cargo transport, driven by domesticated fauna, and I'd have been happy (preferred, even) to ride in the back, but the driver patted the operator's bench beside him expectantly, and as not to be rude I had to ride up front. And as we started to clatter down the road, my fears were realized: he started to talk to me.

"So what is your name, traveler?" He asked in that casual way that suggested there was more conversation on the way, which didn't bode well. It didn't help either that it wasn't an easy question to answer; I couldn't use 'Eden' anymore, after the last stop, in case the security bulletins made it here before I left. (I don't want to talk about it.) But pulling a name from _Sanctuary Moon_ had gone fairly well up till then, so I went with another.

"Percival," I answered, and the man nodded.

"I like that. It's as good, strong name." The driver smiled at me, and I made myself smile back, which immediately turned out to be a mistake as it encouraged him to keep asking questions. "And I know it's not any of my business, but in my experience no one comes through Corberic unless they're looking for something. So what's brought _you_ here?"

"You're right, it _is_ none of your business," I said, but the driver just laughed and kept looking at me, and eventually I gave up on waiting him out. (I _could_ have waited him out. It wouldn't have taken very much effort. But something about his expression made me feel stupid, and answering the question felt like it would make it stop.) "I'm looking for my..." I had to think about what to call them for a second; 'crew' didn't quite seem like an answer the man would understand. "...family. I left and I'm trying to find my way back."

"Did they want you to leave?" The driver didn't act like this was anything unusual.

"No."

The man nodded and was quiet for a while, but just when I was getting some media playing he spoke up again. "So, what do you do?"

"I'm a security consultant."

He laughed. "Is that a fancy way to say _'knight?'_ "

I thought about this for a second. "No. I'm not a soldier, just a watchperson."

The driver looked thoughtful. "Fair enough." And then, mercifully, he looked satisfied with my answers and was quiet.

## II. How Murderbot was harangued by a Loathly Lady, and was much aggrieved when Sir Kay struck a damsel.

The trip took most of the day, but eventually we arrived at Camelot and the driver let me off. Camelot was another castle, but at least this one had a town around it. I was walking up its main road when a woman started yelling at me.

"You _fool!"_ She was small, but would be well within human norms if not for the excessively stooped posture, and her face and hands looked like she suffered from some sort of untreated medical condition. She was carrying a gnarled walking stick and shaking it in my direction as she advanced.

"Excuse me?" I was used to being yelled at, but usually by my clients. Or humans yelling at each other, who started yelling at me when I intervened. (Usually because they were my clients and I had to.) Being yelled at by a stranger unprovoked was new. But worse, I'd just barely started to feel confident in the principle that I could lose myself in crowds and no one would bother me. But here someone was, singling me out in a crowd as someone to bother.

"You dunce! You utter _nit!_ " The woman hit me with her stick, which didn't hurt, but I flinched. If I wasn't so acutely aware of how fragile humans were, I might have hit her back. "You saw the Grail, but you _didn't ask the Question!_ You could have asked, no, it was right in front of you, but you _didn't!"_ This woman might have single-handedly destroyed my sense of safety in crowds, but her grievance didn't seem like it actually meant anything, so I turned and kept walking, but the woman followed me. "You saw the Grail, but you didn't ask the Question!"

And then she said it again, and eventually I turned around and held out a hand, palm out; not touching her, but the trick worked as reliably as it usually did, and she came up short. "What question?"

The woman smiled widely and gleefully at being engaged, and I knew that I'd made another mistake, but it was too late to stop. "The Fisher King lies crippled from the Dolorous Wound in his thigh, and—"

I interrupted. "The news bulletin said that he'd injured his reproductive organs."

See? I'd read it, even though I didn't care, but the woman still frowned and waved her stick in irritation. "Yes, but it's _rude_ to say that, so we're vague about it."

I glared at her. Usually, my glare made people extremely nervous, but this woman just grinned back at me. For some reason, I liked this even less. "What have you said today that hasn't been rude?"

The woman laughed. I think technically it was a 'cackle.' "Good point. The Fisher King lies crippled from when the spear — you saw the spear too! — from when the spear stabbed him in the junk, and the wound will not heal until someone asks _'For whom the Grail serves.'_ "

As I've said before about entertainments, there was 'good' unrealistic and 'bad' unrealistic, and this was nonsensical enough that it would have fallen in the 'bad' folder even if it wasn't being asserted at me unexpectedly. "How could that possibly help?"

The woman looked at me like I'd just said something inane, because that's just how this day was going. "It's _magic_ , you idiot. Magic Spear, magic Wound, magic Grail. Knights quest for _years_ to find Castle Corberic, and you wander through like it it's your back yard and you _saw the Grail_ but you _didn't ask the Question!_ You saw a procession carrying a bloody spear and a candelabra and a weird bowl and you didn't think to _ask_ what in the Hells it was all about because you're a _nitwit."_

"Yes, because it wasn't any of my business, and I respect other peoples' privacy." I was starting to get angry now, in addition to the normal kind of upset, and I was uncomfortably aware that people were stopping on the street to stare at what looked a lot like me menacing an old lady half my size. "And how can Corberic be hard to find? It's a spaceport."

"Is it?" The woman made an expression that I interpreted as 'sly.' It was the expression that clients tended to make before they ordered me to do something undignified or dangerous for their entertainment. "Is it really?"

I just kept staring. "Yes, it is!"

The woman's smile grew. "Are you _sure?"_

"Yes!"

"You're absolutely _sure_ it's easy for you to find Castle Corberic?" The woman's expression had turned from 'sly' to 'satisfied,' and I felt a sinking feeling in my chest as I realized that she _had_ been playing a game, and that she'd just won. I realized this because two _more_ people were coming over to talk to me, one tall and one a little less tall and with facial hair.

* * *

I probably shouldn't have deleted the memory of the rest of that interaction, but I was upset. I was about to become even more upset, but I was going to be upset at somebody who wasn't myself, so I kept the rest of this.

The tall man was named Kay, and the one with facial hair was named Gawain, and they were both knights, and Kay was in charge of this castle but not in charge of anything else, the person who _was_ in charge of everything else was named Arthur and wasn't here. We were inside the castle, and Gawain and Kay were trying to feed me, and get me to tell them about Castle Corberic, because apparently it was a place of secrets and mystery and it was too much trouble to walk down the road for a few hours.

(Though if nobody here ever bothered to visit the spaceport, it might explain why even their center of government had such a shoddy, outdated excuse for a network.)

Anyways, they were trying to get me to eat and talk to them, and I didn't want to do either, and at least a half-dozen other people had gathered around and were watching us curiously. I don't dream, and I certainly don't have nightmares, but if I did they would look like this. I was angry, and I was upset, and I was trying very hard not to start a fight that would make the rest of my stay here very uncomfortable, and that made me make more mistakes. Specifically, I started asking questions back.

"Why does everyone act like it's hard to get to Corberic?" I asked this at Kay, because he was the one who'd been talking the most. Not the one who seemed the most knowledgeable, but he hadn't let anyone else get enough of a word in edgewise for me to evaluate them.

"Because it's the _Grail Castle_ ," Kay said, as if I was a child for not already knowing this. "No one knows where it is, and if one catches a glimpse of it..." He paused, and made a dramatic gesture. "...it's gone, when they return. Only a knight who's quested and proved himself worthy can reach it." Kay grinned a grin I decided I didn't like, and nudged a woman next to him with his elbow. "I guess they don't take into account your _looks_ , right?"

The woman made a noise of exasperation, and Kay gave me a conspiratorial smile, as though I'd be on his side. "Don't mind her, she has no sense of humor anyone can find."

"It would take a far better knight than _you_ to make me laugh," the woman said, giving him a tired glare that told me very clearly that this had been going on for a long time.

"Well," I said, because apparently I was just going to keep making mistakes, "what you said wasn't very funny." The woman looked at me in surprise, and chuckled.

And that's when Kay hit her.

At that point I decided I'd had enough of this place. I took a second to see Gawain and a few others shout and move to intervene, and when I was confident that the woman wasn't in any danger, I left. I kept leaving even when people started shouting at me to stop, and when someone grabbed me I hit them without turning around to see who it was, and by the time I'd left the town no one was following me.

## III. How Murderbot did battle with the Red Knight, and thereby delivered a (different) damsel from harm.

I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew what I _should_ do: go back to Corberic, tuck myself in a corner, and rewatch the entirety of _Sanctuary Moon_ twenty or so times until another transport was leaving this forsaken rock. But there was no network here to watch from, no cameras or drones to tap to watch my environment, no bots I could swap a few hundred hours of media with in exchange for watching my back. I was alone: it was just me and a planet full of humans, and even though I'd cherished my solitude before, this somehow felt like the worst possible kind.

And I hadn't kept a map of my own, since I assumed Camelot's hub would have one, so if I wanted to go back I'd have to talk to another transport driver. And I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment, so I left the town and wandered out onto the dirt road, and I walked. And kept walking. And don't get me wrong, I don't find physical exertion satisfying in the way humans do: I'm usually just as happy standing or lying motionless somewhere where I don't have to worry about my environment. And as I've mentioned, I don't find the natural countryside soothing, though there was nothing particularly offensive about the rolling hills and sparse, green forests. The important thing was that I was moving away from people at a steady rate.

Naturally, this meant that a person found me, because I have the worst possible luck. She was riding another of the domesticated fauna that seemed popular around here, and both her and the animal looked distressed — and to _my_ distress, she pulled her animal up short when she saw me and called out. "Brave security consultant! I beg a moment of your time!"

I considered ignoring her, rather than letting her rope me into her problems, but she looked like she was on the edge of genuine panic, and I was momentarily too disturbed by how she knew to refer to me that way to keep myself from staring at her. "What's the problem?" I asked. And without any external cameras to watch myself with, I have no idea how my face looked, but it must not have been kind, since the human recoiled slightly.

"I... there's a knight after me, with arms of red. He means to do me harm, and..." The human took a breath. "Please, if I reach Camelot I'll be safe, but my horse is tired and he'll be upon us at any moment."

"Is he on an animal?" I asked, still trying to decide what I was supposed to do here. "Couldn't he go around me?"

The human frowned at me. "He's a knight, my lord. If you challenge him, he'll fight you. That's what they do."

Now I was frowning, too. I think. "I'm not anyone's administrator."

"That's... I'm being polite." The damsel looked like she was going to laugh in that compulsive way humans do sometimes when things have gone so horribly, absolutely wrong that it somehow becomes humorous. "Sorry, you aren't from around here, are you?"

"No, I'm not."

She nodded, and swallowed. "Can you help me, or not? There was a loathly lady down the road who said you would, but if you won't I need to start running again."

"I'll help," I said, even though it was a very stupid thing to say. "But you should start running again. I'm only—" I couldn't say that I was only a SecUnit, not a combat unit, even though that was true. "—equipped for security work, so if he's armed for combat I won't be able to stop him." That's really why this was stupid. It was very, very stupid, but I was alone and upset enough that I was going to do it anyways, which meant it was _my_ stupid.

"Okay." The human looked like she was about to hyperventilate, but she took a second to calm herself and readied her horse to move again. "I won't forget this, I promise. And I'll make sure you aren't forgotten. Please, what's your name?"

I didn't _want_ her to tell anyone about me. I didn't even want her to remember me. But her well-being depended on her getting to safety faster, and answering was easier than arguing with her. "Percival."

"Thank you, Sir Percival." She gave me a look of mixed emotions. (Admiration, maybe, and maybe a little guilt. It was an expression I'd seen a lot on people from PreservationAux once they knew what I was, and especially on Tapan. I hated it.) And then, mercifully, she spurred her animal and rode off, and I stepped out to wait in the middle of the road.

* * *

It was barely a few minutes before another human rode down the road. Their domesticated animal was bigger and heavier, and they wore armor that reminded me vaguely of my own, especially the helmet, though instead of shaped synthetic material it looked like it was made from overlapping plates of metallic alloy. They wore a square, sleeveless cloth over it, and both that and the shield attached to their arm were painted a matte red. (But there was no paint on their arms, which made me think I must have misunderstood something.) They stopped their animal when they saw me, and called with an irritated voice that was muffled by their helmet.

"Step aside, cur!"

I didn't know what a 'cur' was, and didn't care; I assumed it was the opposite of the woman's polite 'lord.' The road was wide enough that they could easily have ridden around me, but it looked like the woman was right.

"Another human passed this way earlier," I replied. "Do you mean her harm?"

This human laughed in a way that answered my question with 'yes,' and put me in the mind of a villain from the least realistic of my entertainment media. "That's none of your concern. Step aside, or I'll cut you down where you stand."

"I will not." I tried to ping the systems on their armor, but didn't get anything back; I couldn't even tell if it was networked. Which, if it was as limited as the rest of what I'd seen on Logres, might be a good sign, though it meant that I couldn't tell if they had any hidden weapons. But just in case they were as lightly armed as they looked, I raised my arms and deployed my energy weapons. "I suggest you turn back."

"Very well." The knight unslung what could either be a long melee weapon or a long-range directed-energy weapon and aimed it at me. If it was the latter, I was fucked: I was much sturdier than a human, but something that size would be an anti-vehicle weapon. And if this was a soldier, they'd _have_ an anti-vehicle weapon, which is why this whole confrontation was very stupid. But it would also require a large power source, and I didn't see one, and to my relief and mild astonishment the human just spurred their animal and charged instead of blasting me to slag.

When they started moving I started firing my energy weapons. I landed several hits, but they appeared to splash across the knight's armor without seriously penetrating, though it must have blinded or stunned them somewhat since their melee weapon wobbled; and as they rode by, I grabbed it and used it to pull them off their animal. The knight let go, but only once they were already falling, which was perhaps the worst possible way to do that. And since the weapon was too big and clumsy to be useful to me, I threw it away and charged them as they staggered to their feet.

I considered hitting them, but I didn't know what that armor could do, and it might be electrified, or have some other close-combat defenses I couldn't detect. So I shot them point blank in the helmet until they fell over again, and when they grabbed my ankle I stomped hard enough to break their wrist. And when _that_ didn't cause anything bad to happen to me, I tried to guess which joint in their armor would allow the most of range of motion, decided it was the shoulder, and then hit that hard enough to dislocate it.

And finally, when I was pulling off their helmet and aiming my energy weapon at their unarmored face, their screaming turned into intelligible words along the lines if "Stop, I yield! I yield!"

I stopped hitting them and kept my weapon pointed at their face, but after a second I heard a familiar voice from behind me say something along the lines of "Holy _shit,"_ and I felt irritated all over again.

"I thought I told you to run," I said to the human behind me, without looking away from the defeated knight.

"You did, but I... I couldn't leave you here," she said, and I heard the clopping of animal footsteps as she approached.

I tried not to sound too angry, but this was _exactly_ the kind of behavior that had always made my job harder. "If he was stronger than me, could you have helped?"

"No, but..." The woman made a noise. "But _fuck me_ , Percival, you made all this noise about how you aren't combat-ready and you just _flattened_ him."

The knight was still making _'I've been painfully but nonfatally injured'_ noises, and I glared at him. "I wouldn't have if he was better armed. What can I do with him?" Legally, I meant, but I found myself curiously about how this human would respond.

"You can kill him," the woman said, and I heard her dismount and her voice grow distant as she — and a quick look back confirmed this — jogged over to snag the reins of the knight's mount, and walk over to us with an animal in each hand. I also heard the knight make an unhappy protest about this. "It's legal, he attacked you. Or..." She thought it over for a second. "What _I_ think you should do is take his armor and send him to Camelot to turn himself in."

"Just tell him to walk, and he will?" I ignored the knight's hasty _"I will! I swear!"_ and looked back at the woman again.

She was tapping a finger against her lips in what was clearly a habitual gesture. "He's injured and disgraced. They can treat him, there, any other homestead on the way probably can't. And he's obviously a knight without his armor, so he'll have to explain why, and even if he lies I can corroborate your story."

There was still a hole in this plan of hers. "But why am I taking his armor?"

The woman smiled. "Because, Security Consultant Percival, I want to hire you to get me home unharmed."

* * *

I shouldn't have said 'yes.' I don't _need_ a job. SecUnits are expensive to make, and repair, and deploy, but one of the reasons bond companies like us is because we have a long shelf-life if we aren't getting mangled and shot-up. I didn't need to eat, and even on a backwater like Logres I could find a power source to keep me running for the months it would take to get a transport somewhere else.

Assuming, of course, that everyone around here was just insane and there _wasn't_ something stopping me from going back to Corberic Spaceport. (But it _can't_ be this world's only spaceport though, could it?)

I'd be bored, with only the media in my personal storage, but I've been bored before and survived it just fine. There was absolutely no reason why I needed to accept a job to babysit a random human who'd ignored my advice and ran straight into trouble within minutes of me meeting her.

Maybe it was the armor. I'd left my own back at Port FreeCommerce, because once I left I'd have to pretend to be an augmented human, and augmented humans don't wear SecUnit armor. I doubt it would even fit me anymore, now that ART had adjusted my body shape to pass better, but I missed it. I missed being able to darken my faceplate and not have to make eye contact with anybody. I missed people trying their best to ignore me, rather than flocking in my direction. (I didn't, really. I hated both things.)

And this armor didn't even fit me very well. At the moment I was wearing about half its components, and Blanchefleur was promising me that I could get it adjusted when we got to her home. (Blanchefleur is the woman who'd hired me, because I'd said "yes," because I'm an idiot who's a sucker for a comfortable, face-concealing visor.) At least she seemed to know how armor worked, since the knight just kept making unhelpful whiny noises even _after_ I'd reset his shoulder.

She offered me his horse too, but do I look like I know how to control a horse? (If you saw me wearing a Logressian knight's armor, I guess the answer would be 'yes,' but I don't.) So we sent the knight to stagger on back to Camelot, as I walked and she rode on towards wherever we were going.

And Blanchefleur gave me a confused look as I walked along silently with my visor down, but you know what? For a moment, I think I didn't mind.


End file.
